Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Description

The project commemorating the Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust is situated in a prime location in the German capital, next to the Brandenburg Gate and not far from the Reichstag. It is evidence of the guilt and remorse of the German nation and society for its dark past. An endless grid of concrete blocks stretches across an undulating surface, resembling a large cemetery spread over a field of crops. According to the author, who is Jewish and has German grandparents, the vast grid of the monument evokes the ability of a supposedly rational system to descend into chaos and disorder. The landscape created allows the visitor to walk into it from any point without forming a univocal narrative, enabling each person to have their own experience and get lost in the labyrinth of their own subjectivity. As you enter the monument, the reference to the urban landscape disappears until you are left in a space outside the everyday, tormented and abysmal. To walk through it is not to discover some certainty, but to confront the incomprehensible, the Holocaust.